The Most High God, the Holy Trinity, sustains and gives life to all things, from the smallest blade of grass to the most distant star.
The beautiful and staple prayer, “O Heavenly King,” clearly confess this reality, “Who art everywhere present and fills all things.” The Holy Trinity is the Giver of life – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in Their Divine love have done all things that mankind might have life, and life most abundantly.
St. Dimitry of Rostov gives voice to this truth when he writes, “It is, of course, true that God as Everywhere-present and the Filler-of-all-things, with His almighty, all encompassing and all guiding power, is near every person; He is near the evil, and He is near the good. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Mat. 5:45). He holds the life of all: the good and evil, the righteous and sinners, for in Him everyone lives moves and has their being (cf. Acts 17:28). But His special grace, His merciful salvation, which helps, covers, and guides, does not abide with every person.”1
Many who have come to the Lord Jesus have sensed the moving of the Spirit in drawing us to the Truth. It is written, “No one may say Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit” (cf. 1 Cor. 12:3).
Yet, at the end the above quote, St. Dimitry makes a clear and important distinction, although the Lord sustains all things, and even acts to draw men to Himself, His special grace is only with those who have begun to enter the living Faith and confess His Holy Name. “It resides only with those who in heartfelt love and fear turn the eyes of their mind to Him and always behold Him as if present before them, according to the words of David the prophet: I foresaw the Lord ever before me (Ps. 15:8).”2
Thus, a vital distinction is made between the general sustaining mercy of God for all mankind and all things, and the special, unique, and exclusive grace that dwells only with those who confess His Name and are united to Him.
In the Holy Scriptures, very concrete images are used to express the Ecclesia of the Lord. This is because the Church, the Ecclesia, is the exclusive bearer of the special grace of God. The Church is called a body (cf. Eph. 1:22-23). A body is exclusive. Either members are clearly joined to it, or they are not. No one’s body has living members not attached to it. This is physically impossible because in not being attached, they become dead. The Church is called an olive tree (cf. Rom. 11:16ff). Branches (members) are broken off and others are grafted in. The removed branches do not remain part of the tree. A branch must be connected to the trunk to be part of the tree. A similar image of a vine is used by our Lord (cf. Jn. 15:1ff). Branches are pruned and some are removed. The Lord Jesus makes clear that a branch cannot bear true fruit if it does not abide in the vine. There are no self-existing and self-sustaining branches separated from the vine. The image of a bride or wife is also used (cf. Eph. 5:22ff). Christian marriage is always monogamous. There are not other wives and brides. There is only one, she is exclusive.
The above references suffice to indicate that the Church is the unique and exclusive community of the Lord. I might add that in the Old Testament, the Nation of Israel was set apart and distinct. To be a Christian is to be part of the holy nation founded in Christ Jesus, that is His Church. We are born into this nation through holy baptism and we are bound together by the One Spirit and the One Body and Blood of our One Lord Jesus Christ.
St. Justin Popovich teaches, “Make no mistake, Orthodoxy is Orthodoxy only through the Theanthropos, for Christianity is Christianity only through the Theanthropos; in this lies His unique importance, His value and His power. The Lord has left Himself, His theanthropic Person, as the Church, and the Church is thus the Church only by and in the Theanthropos … the Church is nothing other than Christ the God-Man continued throughout all the ages … You are aware that I am talking about the Orthodox Church.”3 The singularity and uniqueness of the Church, the Body, is derived from the essential Oneness of the Lord God. There are no other Gods besides the One Holy Trinity. “There is one body, one Spirit … one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Eph. 4:4-6). As it is impossible for there to be many and other “lords,” and as it is impossible for God to be divided, so it is equally impossible for His Body. Members may remove themselves for various reasons, but in leaving the Body they cease partaking of true membership therein.
Thus, there is a very important distinction between the general operation of the mercy of God to all creation, and the drawing of men towards Himself – which happens outside the Church – and the exclusive, special, and unique grace and mysteries that abide only in the Body of Christ and are only accessible to those who willingly enter into the Nation of Jesus Christ. It is terribly detrimental when these lines are blurred. Sadly, this is common in our times. The intention is to create confusion, and moreover to attempt to deconstruct the special and exclusive Life given by Christ Himself solely to His Body, the Church, and as St. Justin says, I am talking about the Orthodox Church.
This vital and indispensable distinction is further made clear by the great teacher of the Church, the New Hiero-martyr Hilarion (Troitsky). “Outside the Church and without the Church, Christian life is impossible. Without the Church, the Christian teaching alone remains an empty sound, for Christian life is Church life. Only in the life of the Church can a person live and develop. In a bodily organism, separate members never grow or develop independently of one another, but always and only in connection with the whole organism. The same applies to the Church.”4
St. Hilarion further gives to us this substantial teaching of the Church, “Saint Cyprian even expressed the decisive thought that, not only can there be no Christian life outside of the Church, but there can be no Christian teaching either. The pure faith exists only in the Church. Saint Cyprian also calls the Church by the name ‘Truth,’ and teaches that the unity of the faith cannot be separated from the unity of the Church, for truth is one even as the Church is one.”5
St. Hilarion then contrasts some of St. Cyprian’s teachings with those of St. Augustine and concludes that although there are some minor differences in detail, the end conclusion is the same, “According to the teaching of Blessed Augustine, the Church is a concept narrower than Christianity which is understood only in the sense of abstract theses. It is possible to be in accord with these abstract theses while remaining outside of the Church; but for the unity with the Church, the accord of will is indispensible. It is evident that without the later, abstract accord with Christian teaching alone is completely useless and that there is no salvation outside of the Church … Christianity and the Church are the same thing only when we do not regard Christianity as the sum of a sort of abstract thesis, not obliging anyone to anything. Such an understanding of Christianity can only be called demonic.”6
It is this very abstract understanding of Christianity that is preached and promoted in the “Ecumenical Movement” or Ecumenism, and as St. Hilarion writes, it can only be called demonic. He further instructs us, “It would follow that such Christians also acknowledge the way of demons who also believe and tremble. Does to know the system really mean to be a true Christian? … To be a Christian means to belong to the Church, for Christianity is precisely the Church. Outside the Church there is no life and there cannot be.”7
Fundamentally and according to the Scriptures and Holy Fathers, to be a Christian is to be united to the living organism, the living body, the living tree and vine, the living nation, of the Church, which can never be separated from her head, Who is Christ Jesus the Heavenly Bridegroom. To be a Christian is to be substantially united to Christ Jesus in His Body and the growing and living in the Way of Life that this exclusive Body gives through the Holy Spirit. Teaching is but the product of this essential life (and does hold an important place in the Church), but without the unity of the life of the Church teaching itself may become but another philosophical system.
Yet, even in our times the totality of Christian teaching has of necessity been reduced and minimized so to achieve a type of unia between the multitude of supposed confessions, many very contradictory. Thus, even the substance of Christian teaching is eviscerated so that a compromised unia may be reached, and this is attributed to the Holy Spirit! Pathetic excuses such as, “it is a misunderstanding of words” are used by even some Orthodox to brush Patristic teaching under the rug. Clearly we understand better than the Fathers who expounded the Faith by the grace of the Holy Spirit! Ecumenism demands that every heresy and false teaching be treated as if it were the truth. It demands that God become a schizophrenic who is constantly contradicting himself, giving one “truth” to this group and a substantially different one to this group! When Truth has been abandoned, one must pretend that the multitude of lies are the truth.
St. Hilarion warns us that the temptation to emphasize only the “theoretical” side of Christianity stems from the root of human pride. He writes that Protestantism exemplifies this desire, “The theoretical side of Protestantism appealed to human self-love and self-will of all varieties, for self-love and self-will receive a sort of sanctification and blessing from Protestantism … it is Protestantism that openly proclaimed the greatest lie of all: that one can be a Christian while denying the Church.”8 The Saint also teaches us that “Protestantism is the last word of Papism.”
The same spirit afflicts them both but is manifest in different forms. It is this spirit that is the driver of modern ecumenism.
Writing at the beginning of the 20th century, St. Hilarion prophetically foresaw that the end of what was being promoted as “Christian ecumenism” will end in total syncretism. This is very clear today when many, even clerics, claim that Christians, Rabbinical Judaism, and Islam all serve the same “God.”9 This of course is not true because both Judaism and Islam reject Jesus Christ as Lord and God, and whoever denies the Son cannot be serving the Father (cf. 1 Jn. 2:23). “If anyone denies the Church with its religious ideals, then Christ becomes for him only a teacher-philosopher in the category of Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Lao-Tse and others. Moreover, Christ, as a teacher, appears far from original … Christ is likened to a poor scholar who complies his work by borrowing, not always successfully, from the works of various other people.”10
At the heart of the modern ecumenical movement is an anti-ecclisia spirit, a spirit that is against the Body of Christ, and in so doing it is against Christ Himself (for who can oppose a person’s body and not be against him?). So, ultimately it is an antichrist spirit that seeks to subvert, deconstruct, and in the long run destroy the Body of Christ, the Church. What other spirit would seek such a thing? Sadly it dresses itself in Christian clothing, and is even being peddled by some in Orthodoxy.
True unity only is achieved in the very Body of Christ. Unity is achieved when those who have, for whatever reasons and however diverse they may be, return to the exclusive, singular, and one Body, the Church, of our Lord Jesus Christ. The way of unity is, “Repent and believe in the Gospel, unite yourself to Christ in His Holy Church.”
St. Hilarion tells us, “Churchless Christianity, the so-called ‘evangelical’ Christianity … is nothing other than a debasement of Christ’s concept of the Church, killing all genuine Christian, Grace-filled life.”11 It is suicidal for Orthodox people to adhere to the propositions of ecumenism, for in doing so we are killing our own genuine and Grace-filled life so graciously given to us by Christ Jesus Himself. Maybe this is one of the reasons we see so many ailments all around us?
Yes, it is true that the Lord God sustains all things, and is actively drawing men to Life and He moves in certain ways outside the Church (how else would we all still be alive?). Yet, He has established the Church as His exclusive Body in which mankind is reunited with Him, the mysteries and graces that He gives to Her are Hers alone, that is, there are no Divine Mysteries (Sacraments) outside of the Living and One Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, I am speaking of the Orthodox Church. To be in the Church means to unite oneself to the Orthodox Church.
But today they want us, especially the Orthodox, to trade our gold for copper. We must refuse this terrible trade. St. Hilarion instructs us, “Without the Church, it is possible to place whatever pleases oneself under this name. In this way you will not completely break with Christ and yet you will not especially inconvenience yourself. In a word, the wolves are fed, but the sheep are not eaten! The great misfortune of our times lies in the fact that no one wishes to admit frankly their spiritual poverty and that their hearts have been hardened to such a degree that Christ’s ideal of the Church has become burdensome and even unintelligible. No, having copper instead of gold, they now wish to declare gold valueless.”12
1Instructions on the Path to Virtue, pg. 13.
2Ibid.
3The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism. Lazarica Press. pg. 117.
4Christianity or the Church? Printshop of St. Job of Pochaev, Jordanville, N.Y. pg. 14.
5Ibid. pg. 20.
6Ibid. pp. 23, 24
7Ibid. pg. 24.
8Ibid. pg. 26-27.
9https://www.orthodoxwitness.org/do-all-religions-have-the-same-heavenly-father/
10Ibid. pg. 32.
11Ibid. pg. 39.
12Ibid. pg. 38
The Inkless Pen 
Thank you Father, your blessing! Some follow-up quotes from St Paisios and others.
Elder Paisios the Hagiorite 1924-1994
Today unfortunately, the European courtesy has come in and they try to show themselves as being nice. They wish to show superiority and finally they end up worshipping the two horned devil. “One religion”, they tell you, “should exist”, and they level out everything. Some also come to me and tell me “All of us who believe in Christ should create one religion”. “Now it is as if you are telling me”, I told them, “about gold and copper, so many carats gold and that much copper, that was separated, to gather them and make them one again. Is it correct to mix them again? Ask a jeweler. Is it proper to mix trash with gold? So much struggle was waged to distil the dogma”.
The Holy Fathers must have known something for prohibiting the relationships with the heretics. Today they say: “we should pray together not only with a heretics but also with the Buddhist and with the fire worshipper and the demon worshipper. The Orthodox must also be present in common prayers and in their conferences. It is a presence”. What presence? They resolve everything with logic and justify the unjustifiable. The European mind believes that also the spiritual matters can also come into the Common Market. Some of the Orthodox who are shallow and wish to make a promotion, “a mission”, they arrange conferences with the heterodox to cause a sensation, believing this way that they promote Orthodoxy, by becoming so to speak “Hungarian goulash” with the false believers. Then the super-zealots take hold of the other end; they also blaspheme against the Mysteries of the New-calendarists, etc. and deeply scandalize the souls who have piety and Orthodox sensitivity. On the other hand, the heterodox come to conferences, act like teachers, take whatever good spiritual thing they find from the Orthodox, they process it, they give it their own color and mark and they present it as a prototype. And the strange contemporary world becomes touched by such strange things and is spiritually destroyed. The Lord, though at the appropriate time, will present the Mark Evgenikoses and the Gregory Palamases, who will assemble all our deeply scandalized brothers, to confess the Orthodox faith and strengthen the traditions of the Church and give great joy to our Mother, the Church. (With Anguish and Love for the Contemporary Man)
Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky)
Given this state of things, is not a Coptic or Monophysite liturgy but a piece of non-representational nonsense without any real substance or meaning? Indeed, the subject-matter of the mystery of the Eucharist are the Divine Flesh and Blood of Christ – the Flesh that suffered for us, and the Blood that was shed for us. Yet the Flesh and the Blood are appurtenances of the human nature of our Savior: God can neither suffer nor die. If the Monophysites completely deny the human nature of our Savior, what meaning can their liturgy possibly have? Verily their Eucharist is of the kind that our Holy Fathers bluntly referred to as demons’ food. Think what you may, Your Eminence, but I would never allow this blasphemous nonsense in the church or on any other premises.
St. Gregory V of Constantinople:
“Such, indeed, are all those who teach heresy, who through love of power disturb the fullness of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of Christ. Let us neither say nor think that they also believe in one Lord, have one Baptism, and confess the one Faith.
If their opinions are correct, then by necessity our own must be incorrect. But if our own doctrines are upheld and believed and given credence and confessed by all as being good, true, correct, and unadulterated, manifestly then, the so-called sacraments of all heretics are evil, bereft of divine grace, abominable, and loathsome, and the grace of ordination and the priesthood by which these sacraments are performed has vanished and departed from them. And when there is no priesthood, all the rest are dead and bereft of spiritual grace.
We say these things, beloved, lest anyone — either man or woman — be misled by the heterodox regarding their apparent sacraments and their so-called Christianity.”
“… the so-called sacraments of all heretics are evil, bereft of divine grace, abominable, and loathsome, and the grace of ordination and the priesthood by which these sacraments are performed has vanished and departed from them. And when there is no priesthood, all the rest are dead and bereft of divine grace.”
– St. Gregory V Patriarch of Constantinople
The Distinct Operations of the Divine Energies of the Holy Spirit
St Maximos the Confessor, St John Damascene, 5th – 7th Ecumenical Councils
On Grace Before and After Baptism by St. Diadochos of Photiki
76. Some have imagined that both grace and sin – that is, the spirit of truth and the spirit of error – are hidden at the same time in the intellect [nous] of the baptized. As a result, they say, one of these two spirits urges the intellect to good, the other to evil. But from Holy Scripture and through the intellect’s [nous’] own insight I have come to understand things differently. Before holy baptism, grace encourages the soul towards good from the outside, while Satan lurks in its depths, trying to block all the intellect’s ways of approach to the divine. But from the moment that we are reborn through baptism, the demon is outside, grace is within. Thus, whereas before baptism error ruled the soul, after baptism truth rules it. Nevertheless, even after baptism Satan still acts on the soul, often, indeed, to a greater degree than before. This is not because he is present in the soul together with grace; on the contrary, it is because he uses the body’s humors to befog the intellect [nous] with the delight of mindless pleasures. God allows him to do this, so that a man, after passing through a trial of storm and fire, may come in the end to the full enjoyment of divine blessings. For it is written: ‘We went through fire and water, and Thou hast brought us out into a place where the soul is refreshed’ (Ps. 66.12. LXX).
77. As we have said, from the instant we are baptized, grace is hidden in the depths of the intellect [nous], concealing its presence even from the perception of the intellect [nous] itself. When someone begins, however, to love God with full resolve, then in a mysterious way, by means of intellectual [the nous’] perception, grace communicates something of its riches to his soul.-Then, if he really wants to hold fast to this discovery, he joyfully starts longing to be rid of all his temporal goods, so as to acquire the field in which he has found the hidden treasure of life (cf. Matt. 13:44). This is because, when someone rids himself of all worldly riches, he discovers the place where the grace of God is hidden. For as the soul advances, divine grace more and more reveals itself to the intellect [nous]. During this process, however, the Lord allows the soul to be pestered increasingly by demons. This is to teach it to discriminate correctly between good and evil, and to make it more humble through the deep shame it feels during its purification because of the way in which it is defiled by demonic thoughts.
Saint Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Knowledge, from the Philokalia Vol. 1
Metropolitan Vitaly (Ustinov)
“Completely forgotten is the patristic dictum that “the communion of heretics is the food of devils.” And if there is no holy Communion, there cannot in general be any sacrament whatsoever… There is God, there is His One, only Holy, Apostolic Church, and there is the whole human race, all called to God through His holy Church.
All other religions, so-called Christian, monotheistic or pagan, all without the slightest exception, whether it be Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam or Buddhism—all are obstacles placed by the devil as his traps between the Church of Christ and the whole human race.
Only in personal relationships with those of different faiths, for the sake of church economy, for the sake simply of knowledge and criticism, we can view certain of them as more capable of becoming Orthodox, and others as farther away, but in principle they all without exception belong to falsehood, having nothing in common with truth.”
Father Kosmas of Australia (Orthodoxtalks.com For the Orthodox Faithful who are Confused about Covidism)
When considering whether to listen to the saints, holy elders and eldresses or to the hierarchs and priests who are pushing for vaccinations – many of whom, as we said, are ecumenists, modernists and anti-traditionalists – the faithful should keep in mind the following. After the death of holy people, their bodies and bones show signs of holiness such as golden coloured bones, incorrupt relics, the giving off of myrrh and miracle working. As much as it is impossible to squeeze water from a rock, likewise it is impossible for the bodies or bones of ecumenists, modernists and anti-traditionalists to show any signs of holiness such as those described above. To date, the remains of these enemies of the Orthodox Church have never shown any signs of holiness, nor have they performed one miracle – and they never will. Amen.
LikeLike
Father bless.
Thank you, Fr. Lynch, for posting this, for “The Satan-led and fetid pan-heresy of Ecumenism adopts and legitimizes all heresies as “churches” and attacks the uniqueness, exclusivity and dogma of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. A new doctrine of the Church has now grown, is being taught and is imposed by the Ecumenists; a new ecclesiology,”-Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus
Doxa to Theo, John D
Father bless.
*Ecumenism Holy Monastery of the Paraclete https://oodegr.com/english/biblia/oikoym1/perieh.htm
CHAPTER 15. Our duty
We are undoubtedly living in a time of world-shaping changes. Events –which are now being directed– are racing along at an incredible rate. Ecumenism is evolving, within the levelling plans of the Globalization that is being imposed by powerful socio-political centers. Nobody really believes any more that Ecumenism can offer a visible solution to the hope for Christian unity.
As Orthodox Christians, we should neither float in the clouds, nor should we lack apprehension. If we truly have a respect for peoples’ lives, if we truly ache for the people of the West, who have been tortured by their religious traditions, as well as for the people of the Orient, who are entrapped in demonic beliefs, we have a duty to remain focused in our Holy Church. We have an obligation to preserve our paternal faith unadulterated, living it authentically in our daily struggle for personal sanctification and theosis. The proper faith and a meticulous way of life will render us worthy witnesses of Orthodoxy and –why not?– worthy of martyrdom, if and when circumstances may demand it…
The persistence in Orthodoxy – or in other words the veridicality of life – and the persistence in the Truth that liberates and saves, is not a form of egoism, fanaticism, or religious intolerance; it is an expression of the universal quality, the love and the philanthropy of the Orthodox Church. And it also comprises the ultimate potential that Orthodoxy can offer, for both a radical spiritual turnabout in the West, but also an outlet for the Orient, to escape from its captivity by false gods.
+++
*Do all Religions Have the Same Heavenly Father? FR. EMMANUEL HATZIDAKIS | JUNE 15, 2014
https://www.orthodoxwitness.org/do-all-religions-have-the-same-heavenly-father/
“WE ARE ALL BROTHERS AND SISTERS” Are we? First in Jerusalem (May 27, 2014), and more recently in Rome (June 8, 2014), Patriarch Bartholomew hammers the message of universal brotherhood with intra-Christian and interfaith prayer services (which according to the canons of the Orthodox Church are prohibited) and with statements and declarations to that effect.
Back on Nov. 2, 2009 in an interview Patriarch Bartholomew had given to Charlie Rose (view the video below) he had stated: “We are all created by God and as such we are all brothers and sisters. We have the same heavenly Father, whatever we call him.” Charlie interrupted the Patriarch: “All religions have the same heavenly Father?” “Of course,” was the Patriarch’s reply, adding: “God is but one, independently of the name we give him, Allah or Yahweh, and so on. God is one and we are his children.”
Although the two statements (everyone believes in the same God; and, we are all his children) appear to be self-proclaimed truths, for us Orthodox Christians (and to me, as I understand my faith), they are erroneous, outrageous and totally unacceptable. If the Patriarch is correct what meaning do the words, “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no Savior” (Is. 43:10b-11)? What is he thinking of when he recites the following words in the divine Liturgy (our main worship service): “You are our God, beside You we know of no other [God]” and in the final benediction of the same service, “May Christ our true God… save us…”?
No. It’s not a matter of a name (God, Allah, Jehovah, Buddha, Supreme Being, the Power), so that it doesn’t matter what we call Him, as long as we call upon Him. No. Not so! Our God is Christ: “This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:20-21). Outside of Christ every other “god” is an idol.
As far as all of us being children of God, clearly we are all God’s creation, but not His offspring. Our heavenly Father has only one Child: Jesus Christ. However, we all have the potentiality to become His children (by adoption): “To all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12). Therefore, unless we belong to Christ’s family (cf. Heb. 3:6), the Church, we are not His children.
In the early Church the Lord’s Prayer was not revealed to the Catechumens until immediately before their baptism, because no one that was not baptized could presume to say, “our Father who art in heaven,” not having yet received the gift of adoption. The Lord’s Prayer is introduced in the Divine Liturgy with the words, “and make us worthy, Master, with boldness and without fear of condemnation, to dare call You, the heavenly God, Father, and to say, ‘Our Father…’” Only those who have been united with Christ, God’s only Son, can call God “Father.”
Sorry, your All Holiness: this is the faith of the Orthodox Christian people, and one would expect our Patriarch to be a leader “who rightly teaches the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15), not one who betrays it.
+++
*‘The Satan-led and fetid pan-heresy of Ecumenism adopts and legitimizes all heresies as “churches” and attacks the uniqueness, exclusivity and dogma of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. A new doctrine of the Church has now grown, is being taught and is imposed by the Ecumenists; a new ecclesiology, according to which no group can claim exclusively the character of “Catholic and true Church”—whether heretics, or even the Orthodox Church. Every heresy, even the Orthodox Church, is only a piece, a part of this new Ecumenist “church,” and not the entire Church. All together these heresies with the Orthodox Church compose the new Ecumenist Church.”’ +Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus https://www.orthodoxwitness.org/a-clear-picture-of-ecumenism/
+++
POST-PATRISTIC THEOLOGY FROM A CHURCH PERSPECTIVE
His Eminence Metropolitan Ierotheos of Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios. http://orthodox-voice.blogspot.com/2013/05/post-patristic-theology-from-church.html
“I think that the initiative of His Eminence Metropolitan Serafeim of Piraeus and Faliron is worthy of attention and praise.” – Met. Ierotheos of Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios
It has been well remarked that the ideological, cultural and spiritual movements which appeared in the West, such as the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Modernism, came to Greece some thirty to thirty-five years later. So what appeared new to us, had already come to dominate in the West many years before. The same is true of the phenomenon of post-Patristic theology, which has been much talked about here in Greece. I think that the initiative of His Eminence Metropolitan Serafeim of Piraeus and Faliron is worthy of attention and praise. This phenomenon must be faced, because such movements represent secularization in theology and the pastoral practices of the Orthodox Church.
===
WHAT IS TRUTH There are NOT many truths. There is ONLY ONE Truth, Jesus Christ Messages from Rev. Father George Konstantopoulos The Eastern Orthodox Christian Ethos
There are NOT many truths. There is ONLY ONE Truth, Jesus Christ. What humanity is looking for, if it is looking for the truth, is right in front of it. The Jews rejected the Messiah Jesus Christ and by doing so they rejected the Truth. We see the same thing taking place in our contemporary world which not only has rejected Christ, the Truth but has deliberately attempted again and again to distort the Truth and deceive humanity. Even Christians are confused among themselves regarding the Truth and who is in possession of it. Because they have abandoned the authentic Church of Christ they have fallen into spiritual corruption distortions, and false interpretations of the Holy Scripture. How else can one explain the formation of 45,000 different denominations or fragments of Christianity in the world? How else can one explain the countless errors and heresies that have resulted due to the lack of guidance? There is only One God, One Church, One Creed, One Baptism, and One Truth in our Christian Faith. There is no unity among Christians because they have lost sight of Jesus Christ Who is the Truth. They lack guidance because they have stopped believing in God the Holy Spirit, Our True Guide, and Comforter. Christianity was founded by Jesus Christ on His REVELATION OF THE DIVINE AND ETERNAL TRUTH.
“The tendency in contemporary cultural society to place ALL confessions on one level is not limited to Christianity; on this same all-equalling level are placed also the non-Christian religions, on the grounds that they all “lead to God,” and besides, taken all together, they far surpass the Christian world in the number of members who belong to them.
All of such “uniting” and “equalizing” views indicate a forgetfulness of the principle that there can be many teachings and opinions, but there is only ONE TRUTH. And authentic Christian unity–UNITY IN THE CHURCH–can be based only upon ONENESS OF MIND, and NOT upon differences of mind. The Church is THE PILLAR AND GROUND OF THE TRUTH” (1 Timothy 3:15). While the HolyScriptures are the INSPIRED TRUTH of God in human words (2 Timothy 3:15-17), the Church is THE PILLAR AND GROUND of that Truth. Saint Paul, however, exhorts the Christians saying, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times SOME WILL DEPART FROM THE FAITH, GIVING HEED TO DECEIVING SPIRITS AND DOCTRINES OF DEMONS, SPEAKING LIES IN HYPOCRISY, HAVING THEIR OWN CONSCIENCE SEARED WITH A HOT IRON” (1 Timothy 4:1-2). We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ created the Church to bring the whole world to Him and for all of mankind to find salvation in Him.”
*
LikeLike